Are hep panels always correct?

[lotta1964]

My ex-husband has hep c and gave blood about 12 years ago and they said I had a transmitable deaseae. I had a hep panel and it came back negative. I am now having some symptoms could it have not showed up then?

[copyman]

the chance of an antibody test of being wrong is only 5% or less. If you want to see if you have HCV do a qualitative test. This is a very accurate test that will simply say Neg (no virus detected) or Pos (virus detected).
Good luck

[Diane12855]

Are you saying that you had all of your testing done in 1999? That was after they had developed the test for HCV antibodies, but since humans do the tests and many are very careless at times, there could well be a chance that your tests were incorrect. The only way to be sure is to be retested.

Good Luck,
Diane

[Bill1954]

Blood banks use antibody testing for their primary HCV screening; these have a relatively high rate of false positive results, along with other factors. So no, they are not always indicative of active infection.

Ask your doctor for additional testing; he/she will likely initially order ‘HCV antibody’ testing, and if that’s positive, then confirmation testing will be required.

Even if the antibody test suggests past exposure, roughly 20% will beat the virus with their own immune response.

Remember that vaccines are readily available for Hep A and Hep B…

Good luck,

Bill